


The Devil You Know

by TonyCanBreakdance (TheChief), YourForever



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: I'm trash., M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 22:00:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5982241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheChief/pseuds/TonyCanBreakdance, https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourForever/pseuds/YourForever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The devil you know is better than the devil you don't, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil You Know

**Author's Note:**

> Based off of Melanie Martinez's cover of La Roux's Bulletproof. You can find it on YouTube, but [here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wczb4PATTXQ) the one I was listening to when I decided to write.

They’re friends.

They’d always been friends. Really, they had.

Being friends with Calum was really the only thing Michael was super good at.

But then, something had gone terribly horribly wrong and Michael had no longer been Calum’s _best_  friend.

It had been Michael’s fault, hadn’t it?

They’d been close friends since before they could remember and sometimes weird shit happened and yeah, sure, everyone kissed, but Michael, Michael remembers wanting it to happen again and he also remembers knowing that he shouldn’t want that.

So he’d shut down.

Calum would text and first it would take him an hour or so to answer instead of minutes, but then hours turned to days and then to weeks and then Michael stopped answering and, at some point, Calum stopped trying.

And they’d grown apart. They were still friends on social media and still liked each other’s posts, but Michael could tell that Calum no longer got his tweets sent to his phone because he wasn’t always the first like anymore, but the twelfth or thirteenth.

He remembers on Calum’s sixteenth, the Kiwi boy showed up, clearly upset, and wouldn’t leave until Michael talked to him. Michael had simply chosen not to come out of his house, instead texting Mali to come pick up her brother.

She’d told him to fuck off, but had done it anyway.

And then Calum had stopped glancing in Michael’s direction all together and by the time they were looking at Universities, Michael was hearing talk about Calum going to some school with a brilliant football team on scholarship and it really hurt - though he would never admit it - but he was also kind of proud for his friend.

Because they would always be friends.

It was the one thing Michael was good at, being Calum’s friend. Though he really wasn’t that good at it after all, was he?

Michael didn’t go to Calum’s going away party, but he hadn’t actually been invited in the first place, so that was fair.

He picked up guitar, sitting down and learning and relearning notes and chords and practicing throwing them all together because he didn’t have anything else to do besides check Calum’s social media for updates about football camp.

It’s while he’s gone that Michael decides that maybe, just maybe, he can be a better friend - maybe be a best friend again.

Two days after Calum got back from Brazil, he sent a single text. 

_**Hey** _

~

It was to get away.

He’d never say it to his parents or to Mali - though he was sure Mali already knew - but it still stung when they saw each other in the hallway.

They’d been best friends.

And Calum didn’t know what he did wrong.

He wanted to fight, wanted to be yelled at because then he’d at least know how to start fixing it.

But he wasn’t even given that option. He was iced out.

And it took a while to sink in - and a few too many late nights wondering if sending _another_ text within twenty four hours would be weird or clingy - but it eventually did. He got the point.

So he tried to move on.

He met a boy who was also blonde, but he had the skies in his eyes and Calum found it refreshing to have someone smile at him for a change.

They started talking in music class. His name was Luke. And from there it spiraled, just like Michael, but the opposite, going up.

By the end of year ten, they were good friends and, aside from one night when Calum had gotten drunk and cried because _god, what had he done to fuck things up with his best fucking friend_ , _and maybe he didn’t really deserve friends, did he?_  but Luke assured him the entire time that he was fine.

And when Luke kissed him behind the school, Calum was happy to pretend that he hadn’t felt the ghost of Michael’s touch.

They lasted on just soft kisses and whispered promises for more one day for two years. Luke was a year under Calum and he wanted him to take a year off before University so that they could go together, but Cal had just been offered a great scholarship for football, and he couldn’t ask them to wait, and how could he really turn that down.

The conversation had ended with Luke yelling that Cal had to realize how much he was worth it because they would wait, if he’d just get up the nerve to ask.

And the conversation had suddenly flipped to Michael and how Luke thought that Cal still loved him and that he’d never accept his worth until he realized that Michael was an asshole, but no, Luke was wrong, because that whole thing was Calum’s fault.

He sent in his official acceptance the next day.

After that, school had been a blur and suddenly, he’d been in Brazil with a collection of other boys all interested in football. Three of them were from Australia, one of them not too far from where Calum was from.

They were paired up to spar alphabetically by last name and apparently this kid was named Irwin.

By the end of the day, Calum also knew that his name was Ashton and he had this wild head of curls that his bandanna couldn’t hope to contain. His middle name was Fletcher. He was the oldest of three and he adored his family.

By then, Calum  could already recognize the signs, so it didn’t take him nearly as long to see that Ashton felt the same.

The pretty boy with the hazel eyes and the smile made of sunshine felt the same.

They kissed the fourth day of camp, in the bunks after lights out.

By the end of the second week, Calum hadn’t stopped Ashton when the older boy had slipped a hand down the front of his pajamas.

And camp was a month and a half.

When the end of camp did roll around, Calum was holding Ashton’s hand when they climbed onto the plane back to Australia.

At the airport they stayed together until their families met them by the baggage claim. They split up there and went their separate ways with promises to call and text and visit.

Back in his own room, the memory of the feel of Ashton’s hand was followed quickly by the sound of Michael’s laugh that always seemed to echo through the house.

The relationship he’d fucked up before it could start.

Ashton’s kisses soured in comparison to the memory of the one brief one he’d shared with Michael. Michael who had stopped talking to him a few months later, before Calum could maybe ask for another one.

It took him less that thirty six hours to almost talk himself out of his downward spiral, comparing Ashton to his one perfect relationship, wondering how he’d fuck this up like he’d done with Michael, wondering if Ashton would be willing to accept that mistake.

Forty hours and he’d almost given in and called Ashton twice to make sure he still wanted to date him.

Forty three hours and he’d sent Ashton a text explaining that maybe it wouldn’t work out after all because Calum would no doubt end up messing things up and maybe it was better if they stopped before they got hurt right?

When his phone buzzed, it wasn’t an answer he was expecting. It wasn’t an answer at all. It was a number he’d never deleted from his phone, one he’d never expected a message from again.

**_Hey_ **

And yeah, Michael had hurt him in the past, but the devil you know right?

He retyped the word six times before pressing send and sitting back in his bed, back in his room, feeling like he was in year eight all over again.

**_Hi._ **

**Author's Note:**

> It's short, but I'm trying to get back in the game. Leave me a comment here or over on my [Tumblr!](http://justsomekids.tumblr.com)


End file.
